An
Overview of Part 5 of America the
Philosophical and a defense of “Sophists and Sophistry”
Anderson,
Michael T.
Honors
Introduction to Philosophy
12/10/2013
In
part five of his book America the
Philosophical Carlin Romano discusses Isocrates, an ancient Greek thinker
whom Romano believes to be not just a philosopher, a view not shared among
many contemporary intellectuals, but perhaps a philosopher with more influence
on American thought than his more famous contemporaries such as Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle. In the first subsection of part five of America the Philosophical, “Busting
Isocrates”, Romano begins by highlighting the popularity of Socrates in both intellectual
and non-intellectual circles and then contrasts that popularity with the
relatively unknown status that Isocrates holds in the same circles. He
continues to emphasize the under-appreciation of Isocrates with the example
that even in Athens, the home city of Isocrates, it is impossible to locate a
bust or illustration of the ancient thinker, while hundreds of depictions of
other ancient Athenians abound. Romano proposes that Isocrates should be just
as famous as Socrates, and that the battle between the rhetoric of Isocrates
and the philosophy of Socrates during the “heyday” of ancient Athens was really
just a battle between two different views of philosophy. He goes on to say that
the popular view of Socrates as an “open-minded investigator of ideas”, stems
from the fact that his own beliefs were never really challenged.
Romano then contrasts the views of Socrates with those of
Isocrates, and emphasizes the “imprecise” discourse and deliberation, “logos
politikos”, that Isocrates viewed philosophy to be. Romano proposes that this
view of philosophy matches American pragmatism and philosophical practice far
more than the view Socrates held. He argues that America has operated under the
philosophical “sign” of Isocrates for a long time now. He then states that the
influence of Isocrates on American philosophy has gone unnoticed and that the
intellectual life in America has been described wrong. Romano concludes this
subsection with a challenge to both American intellectual historians and
foreign thinkers to correctly describe intellectual life in this country.
In the second subsection of part five of America the Philosophical, “Isocrates’s
Life”, Romano begins by explaining that all reliable biographical information
on Isocrates comes from his surviving works and that what little else we know
about him comes from tradition, which is often considered unreliable and must
be taken with caution. He goes into a brief biography of Isocrates that begins
with his childhood, covers members of his family, and then highlights his
studies with Tisias, who was thought to have founded the rhetorical practice
with his master Corax. The biography then talks about Isocrates’s time as a
logographer, which he denied in his late apologia Antidosis, and his tutelage of a young Aristotle. According to
Romano six speeches survive that are attributed to Isocrates, yet contemporary
scholars are still divided on whether or not he actually gave them. The text briefly mentions Isocrates’s marriage
and then talks about his school in Athens, which served as the chief rival of
Plato’s Academy.
After discussing Isocrates’s school, Romano moves on to
what garnered Isocrates the most attention during his time, his call for
‘Panhellenism’. Isocrates believed that the Greek city-states should unite
under the leadership of Athens, and under Philip of Macedonia’s leadership
later during the war with the Persian ‘barbarians’. According to the text,
Isocrates believed that an individual could be a Greek in a cultural and
political sense rather than in a racial and ethnic sense. Romano points out
that this belief is similar to the contemporary notion that anyone can become
an American. He then states that
Isocrates viewed becoming Greek entailed possessing intellectual and linguistic
ability, sharing Greek values, and obtaining a Greek education.
Romano concludes the brief biography with Isocrates’s
death, due to self-starvation, after the Athenian defeat at the Battle of
Chaeronea in 338 B.C. In the next paragraph he states that despite the
exclusion of Isocrates from philosophical tradition by Plato and Aristotle,
most scholars agree that his school was far more influential on Greek and Roman
education than either the Academy or the Lyceum. The text then highlights that
in ancient Athens the ability to speak in public was more valuable than the
ability to express oneself through writing. It then goes on to highlight
Isocrates’s accomplishment of establishing writing as a method of both political
expression and activity. Romano wraps up this subsection by once again
proposing that Isocrates is indeed a “philosophical founding father”; he also
hints at the idea that Isocrates may be the “father of blogging”, highlights
his popularity during the Renaissance, and ends with an example of his wit.
In the third subsection of part five of America the Philosophical, “Images and
Clichés of Isocrates”, Romano begins with praise given to Isocrates from
various classical scholars. After listing several positive quotes from these
scholars, Romano reminds readers that negative views of Isocrates exist as well
and gives notable examples that paint a much different picture of the ancient
Athenian. He again contrasts Isocrates with Socrates, painting the latter as a
universally revered hero among philosophers and the former as an often
criticized favorite of a niche group. Romano goes on to suggest that the
negative clichés about Isocrates have been adopted and perpetuated by those who
don’t study him directly. He states that to gain an appreciation for Isocrates
and understand why he matters to both Greek and American intellectual history,
one must understand the difference between sophists, rhetoricians, and
philosophers in ancient Greece.
In the fourth subsection of part five of America the Philosophical, “Sophists and
Sophistry”, Romano begins by listing the most famous sophists of ancient
Greece. He notes that Socrates and Isocrates were both considered to be
sophists during their time, though both rejected the label. He describes the
sophists as intellectuals who traveled and taught the art of persuasion and
argument for a fee. These skills were considered invaluable in a democratic
society in which political participation depended on the ability to speak in
public and sway an audience’s opinion. Romano notes Plato’s view of the
sophists, which was that they were “cheats and sharpies oblivious to the
truth”.
He states that Plato believed the sophists were only
teaching their skills in the pursuit of monetary gain and that they didn’t care
about the interests of the audience. Socrates considered the sophists to be
‘prostitutes of wisdom’, because they sold their knowledge for a profit. At the
time most ancient Greek philosophers shared Plato and Socrates’s views on the sophists,
and that is why most of Western intellectual history takes a derogatory stance
on the sophists. Thus ‘sophistry’ today is synonymous with “crafty and
deceptive thinking”. Romano informs the reader that very little source material
exists from the sophists themselves and that Plato, the best source we have
available, is biased.
He then explores Plato’s views on the sophists in depth,
and talks about how Plato identified Isocrates with the worst features sophists
possessed. Romano asserts that Plato’s label of Isocrates as a sophist is a
“distortion”, and then gives several examples of views that Isocrates shared
with Plato and Socrates. He also points out one major problem in labeling
Isocrates a sophist; Isocrates wrote a pamphlet entitled Against the Sophists circa 390 B.C. In his pamphlet, Isocrates
asserted that sophist discourse was “the greatest obstacle to achieving Greek
unity and Athenian hegemony”. Romano then concludes this subsection by pointing
out Isocrates’s sedentary lifestyle and citizenship of Athens, a sharp contrast
to the nomadic sophist lifestyle, as well as his “conceptual scheme” not
revolving around what is “powerful” like that of the sophists.
He points out that Isocrates clearly distinguished
himself from the sophists, and then asks if Isocrates was a rhetorician. In the fifth subsection of part five of America the Philosophical, “Rhetoricians
and Rhetoric”, Romano begins by defining what rhetoric meant in ancient Greece.
He highlights Gorgias, the man who made rhetoric famous in ancient Athens. He
also notes how even Plato depicted Gorgias and rhetoric fairly in his
dialogues, and later recognized a “higher form of dialectical rhetoric” in the Phaedrus. In the next paragraph, Romano
discusses how neither Gorgias nor Isocrates used the word rhetorike to refer to what they did.
He
points out that Isocrates described his practice as ‘philosophy’, and that
Plato and Aristotle are the ones who used the Greek words for ‘rhetoric’ and
‘rhetorician’. In ancient Greece, a rhetor
was someone who spoke often in courts or assemblies. Romano states the Plato
did not trust training of such orators, because he believed it would not
produce ‘proper statesmen’. Plato was actually the one who coined the
word rhetorike and who spread the
derogatory meaning of it, ‘duplicitous’ or ‘deceptive’ argumentation. He states
that Plato coined rhetorike in order
to distinguish his own discourse and thus elevate it to a “privileged status”.
Romano
highlights the popular opinion among classical scholars that there are two
incredibly different intellectual practices from ancient Greece, “dubious
rhetoric and noble philosophy”, and that Isocrates represents the former and
Socrates and Plato represent the latter.
He states that classics often “bandy” about the terms philosophy and
rhetoric, and concedes that differences of scholarly opinion on the subject is
partly a matter of “semantic choice”. He then points out that Isocrates
distanced himself from the “worst non-philosophical aspects” of rhetoric, just
as he did with the “worst non-philosophical aspects” of sophistry. Romano goes
on to highlight Isocrates’s position on the teaching of rhetoric and how he
believed there should be no “rigid” form used. Isocrates was “amazed” when he saw
teachers of rhetoric “using an ordered art as a model for a creative activity”.
Romano
concludes this subsection by giving an example of a scholarly opinion on
Isocrates which “corroborates the element of semantic choice in this area”, and
then explains why Isocrates avoided using the term rhetoric to describe his
profession. Isocrates did not want to be too closely connected to oratory
teachers whom Plato had said would never be ‘regarded as philosophers’. In the
sixth subsection of part five of America
the Philosophical, “Isocrates, Philosopher”, Romano begins by exploring the
origin of the word philosopher. He looks at Pythagoras, the first to use the
term, and then observes how Plato changed the meaning of the word to ‘lover and
pursuer of wisdom’. According to Romano, “Philosophy, for Plato, aimed at
understanding ‘transcendent essences’ of the concepts it addressed”.
He then highlights Isocrates’s disagreement with Plato on
the meaning of philosophia and
discusses the “in play” nature of the word. Isocrates attempted to designate
his own method as philosophia through
his various works, such as: Antidosis, Helen, and Nicocles. Romano asserts that “genuine
philosophy” must answer everyday problems, and that it enhances a student’s
thinking and speaking abilities. He proposes that Isocrates transitioned
philosophy from speech to writing and in doing so, assists us in understanding
the internal origins of philosophy. Romano then highlights Isocrates’s “moral
sensibility” in his work, a sensibility that the sophists or rhetoricians of
the day did not possess.
Isocrates
rejects the Platonic view that there exist ethical principles that can apply to
all possible situations, and stresses “the contingency of such judgments”.
Nonetheless, the Platonic definition of philosophia
was adopted by Western intellectual history and thus is the definition that
most scholars use today. However, Romano proposes that the definition of
philosophy is once again being contested and that America the Philosophical, like Isocrates, doesn’t pigeonhole
philosophy to one type of thinking nor proposes that ‘any’ sort of this
thinking amounts to philosophy. He once again declares Isocrates to be a
philosopher and asserts that he is a more “compatible” thinker with American
philosophy than either Plato or Socrates.
In
the seventh and final subsection of part five of America the Philosophical, “Isocrates, Greece and America”, Romano
begins by once again comparing Isocrates’s Panhellenism to the modern day
concept of being an American. With Panhellenism, Isocrates proposed that being
Greek was a “state of mind” and that sharing a common culture was more
important than sharing a common blood. Isocrates was an advocate of sophrosyne, or self-control, and valued
the freedom of others. The text suggests that this makes Isocrates a
‘pronounced believer in democracy’, as long as that democracy doesn’t turn into
“mob rule”.
Isocrates
was unique in this respect, because during his time most philosophers were
critical of rule by the people. He showed far more support for it than Plato
and other influential philosophers of the day did. However, his stature in
political thought suffered as much as his stature in philosophical thought due
to deriders likes Aristotle. Aristotle did not share Isocrates support of
democracy and often condescended to him in the political realm. Isocrates’s
view of a united, Athenian led, Greece has been seen as imperialistic by many
intellectuals, but the text gives several examples of scholars defending this
view.
Romano then suggests that Isocrates’s
resonates with contemporary America, and that he “appeals to the instincts of
the man in the street”. He goes on to identify several ways in which
Isocrates’s vision of Athens and greater Greece resembles America. He
highlights connections between classical writers and the founding fathers, and
suggests that the classics gave them a large portion of intellectual tools.
Romano suggests that America’s “immense diversity” forces its citizens to
philosophize and that if Americans have come to recognize that truth emerges
from consensus, it can be attributed to Isocrates. He concludes the final
subsection with John Rawls’s recognition of the pluralism of philosophical and
political beliefs present in the United States, and Rawls’s inability to
convince Americans of principles they would not accept.
In
the subsection of part five of America
the Philosophical entitled “Sophists and Sophistry” Carlin Romano’s main
thesis is “There is no question that Isocrates distinguished himself from the
Sophists.” I agree with this thesis, because in the text Romano clearly defines
what a sophist is, he presents accusations of Isocrates being a sophist, and
then gives sufficient evidence that shows that Isocrates did distinguish
himself from the sophists. Most of what we know about sophists and sophistry
comes from collected fragments that amount to less than twenty pages, and the
most credible source we have on the sophists is Plato. Plato as a source is
biased, because in his day he was a major detractor of sophistry and was the
one who labeled Isocrates as a sophist. Plato had extra incentive to tarnish
the reputation of Isocrates because his school was the chief rival of Plato’s
Academy, and his overall attitude towards sophistry was a mocking and
condescending one.
Isocrates
actually shared views that Plato had, such as the disparagement of eristics.
Isocrates even wrote a pamphlet entitled Against
the Sophists in which he considers them to be greatest obstacle preventing
his Panhellenism from being realized. Unlike sophists, Isocrates demanded
reflection and deliberative choice, rather than unthinking response. Isocrates
was also not a nomad like the sophists, and in fact led a fairly sedentary
lifestyle. His shared views with Plato, open opposition of sophists, and his
lifestyle convince me that Isocrates was not a sophist.
Bibliography
Romano, Carlin. America the Philosophical.
New York: Knopf, 2012. Print.
Very thorough discussion, Michael. With a few more allies like you, Romano may just succeed in rehab-ing Isocrates and bringing him back from the scrap-heap of philosophical history!
ReplyDelete